"Can you tell me something about Dr. William Silkworth?" a pleasant voice asked on my telephone one cold and wintry morning early in January 2001. The pleasant voice continued, "I want to tell the story of a very unusual man, perhaps unappreciated in his day, who was heavily involved in the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous and obsessed in the treatment of alcohol addiction." This statement introduced me to Dale and what I came to believe was his epephany. He spoke of his urgent mission to write a biography of the doctor, my husband's uncle. Our subsequent conversations that winter reawakened many of my memories of the good doctor. Recollections it seems that only I have as the lone survior and keeper of the family legends, personal memories, and very importantly, Uncle Doc's writings, articles, speeches, personal papers, memorabilia, and correspondence, all of which had lain for forty-five years in a file drawer in our home. There never seemed to be time during those years to read and appreciate Bill II's legacy. So began my frienship with Dale—on the phone.
      I remember Uncle Doc as a rather small man with beautiful piercing blue eyes, white hair, well dressed, and with a kind and gentle manner. He was "remote and revered" as my husband would often say. His arresting blue eyes would sometimes gaze abstractly as though he was somewhere with those patients of his. He was after all, a doctor in the year 1900, an amazing accomplishment for the elder son of a very middle class family from Long Branch, New Jersey, who became a celebrity. During a few family visits to his home in Scarsdale, New York, he showed my husband, his nephew and namesake, his

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magnificent gardens and always wanted to hear about Bill II's wartime adventures in the navy. Aunt Annette, grey haired, dignified, every inch the doctor's wife, reassured me, a novice gardener, that impatiens were the most dependable annuals. Family visits were few because the doctor's younger brother, Russell, and sister, Mabel, knew that the patients always came first. Holidays didn't matter. In times of need the good doctor was there. He cared for Russell during two bouts with TB. He helped Bill II in his efforts to be accepted at Annapolis or West Point. Remote, perhaps but there.
     When my husband and I were far from New York and vacation traveling, it was not at all unusual for a person to quietly ask Bill II, "are you any relation to Dr. Silkworth?" There followed, many times, some comments about changing lives, sometimes a choked tear or two. We knew exactly what these secretive encounters meant. Uncle Doc's spirit was becoming worldwide.
     When copying and reading through the old collection of Uncle Doc's papers, articles, and letters, I came to realize with awe that here lived one of God's treasures, one of God's greats, a true hero who hid his light quite successfully in a modest, disarmingly gentle and unassuming manner. He unflaggingly carried forth his crusade to treat alcoholism as a disease, which was a revolutionary idea in his time. He took risks and financial losses to help nurture the beginning steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and to validate the visions of Bill W. and Dr. Bob. Uncle Doc was not a church-going religious man that I know of but his insistence on a spiritual grounding and the acknowledgment of a Higher Power for alcoholic recovery labels him the AA publication Grapevine declared a "doctor saint."
     Through Dale's efforts a problem that had vexed and troubled my husband and me for years was solved. What to do with the Doctor's memorabilia? from Dale I learned of the Dr. William Silkworth unit at the Hazelden Treatment Center in Minnesota. After visiting there in June it was apparent to me that Hazelden was the appropriate location for my husband's legacy. Hazelden will have permanent loan of all of Uncle Doc's collection to be displayed and archived and placed where it really belongs.
     Uncle Doc was a true benefactor and humanitarian. He earned the

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title the "little doctor who loved drunks." The Silkworth family is very proud of him, his achievements, and his place in AA history. It is a great honor for me to be part of this story even though I am only a niece by marriage. Dale's epiphany an invaluable record for all the Silkworth descendants, for Alcoholics Anonymous, for those whose lives have been shattered by addiction and for those whose lives have been repaired, for celebrations of sobriety, and finally for the world to read and be inspired and grateful for Dr. William Duncan Silkworth's life.

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